8 Most Common Mistakes in Email Marketing

What are the most common mistakes email marketers make again and again despite endless tips? We asked this question to four world-known email marketing experts and here are the 8 most useful tips. Follow them and don’t repeat these mistakes!

Each time we have conversations with email marketing experts here at Mailigen, we always ask them what are the most frequent mistakes in email marketing. We looked through our latest interviews and picked the biggest mistakes mentioned by:

Tim Watson, founder at Zettasphere and member of the Direct Marketing Association

Not building an email list continuously

#1 List building is very often neglected. A lot of effort and thought goes into creating content, offers and campaigns, and in the heat of day to day campaigns list growth gets neglected. So invariably when I start discussing with a brand their email strategy I always need to prompt them to talk about opt in email lists. /Tim Watson/

#2 Renting or even buying email lists and then expecting good conversion rates from campaigns sent to these lists. It’s never a good idea. /Tamara Gielen/

Not working on an engaging subject line

#3 Not making it clear what the email is about (subject line), and what’s in it for the reader. /Tamara Gielen/

#4 Creating the subject line two minutes before you send the campaign. Subject lines need to be carefully crafted before the actual email is created in order to not rush it. /Kath Pay/

Not focusing on a strong call to action

#5 Humans are task oriented and most email marketers don’t set the task to accomplish clearly enough for their subscribers – this is generally caused by not focusing on the objective of the email. /Kath Pay/

#6 Not doing any segmentation and just sending everything to everyone. /Tamara Gielen/

Not optimizing email campaigns

#7 Not looking at the email holistically – email marketing isn’t just about the email – it’s about the email journey. Meaning that the PPC driving people to your subscription page needs to be tested and optimized as it will affect your results as an email marketer. The landing pages also need to be tested and optimized, as well as any barriers to conversions here that will have an impact upon your results. /Kath Pay/

#8 Not optimizing the more mundane parts of an email program: like welcome messages and sign-up confirmation pages. Surveys of major retailers, for example, still find a good percentage that don’t use welcome messages, even though we know how effective they can be at lifting results across the whole lifetime of the subscriber. /Mark Brownlow/

To sum up

Email list growth, engaging subject line, strong call to action and optimized emails campaigns! The very basics, aren’t they? But still marketers continue to make these mistakes despite endless tips. We hope you follow the best practices of these email marketing experts and you work smarter than the others!